Never A Last Leaf

I might as well begin with full disclosure. I believe that Yahweh spoke this world into existence about 6000 years ago, and I believe this because the Bible says so.

For a significant portion of the people reading this post, I might as well have just admitted to being a snaggletoothed hick somewhere to the right of Mussolini. I cop to the snaggletooth, but I’m going to ask you to suspend judgment on the rest of it for a little while. Let’s just see where a little unrepentant fundamentalism might take us.

God’s a big fan of green — He literally invented it. Every bit of greenness in this world-sized mixed-media self-portrait is His sovereign choice, a reflection of something about Him. The color is in heaven as well. The halo of glory around God’s throne is a rainbow, “like an emerald in appearance.” He spoke into being every tree, every tree frog, every garter snake. He was there when the first green leaf sprouted, and He will be there when the last leaf falls. Or He would, if there were ever going to be a last leaf.

In that world, He planted a garden, and in that garden, He placed a man “to cultivate and guard it.” Even before he was a husband, Adam was a gardener. But the Triune God was making a self-portrait, and a solitary person was not good, so God made a helper for him. Enter Eve, a distinct person, and different as another human can be, right down to the neurochemistry and the plumbing. These two distinct persons united by God in marriage together were the image of God in the world.

God gave them a responsibility to fulfill:

Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

We have been reluctant to accept the responsibility God gave us. Today, we are troubled by the idea of exercising dominion, of subduing the earth. But surely it can’t be wrong to talk the way God talks. So why are we afraid to do it?

Two reasons: we are cynics, and we are egalitarians.

Cynicism is easy. There’s always a cheap shot to take. No matter how responsible the action under discussion, we can always find points of superficial similarity to other, irresponsible actions. Dominion language has been invoked by every Bible-thumping robber baron who ever wanted to strip-mine another species into extinction for his own personal profit, and that makes it easy to just sneer and condemn by innuendo every time someone talks about exercising dominion. It costs us nothing. It seems to risk nothing.

But underneath the sneering pretense, we are cowering. We are afraid, and we are addicted to immaturity.

That seem harsh to you? Consider this: the devil himself once invoked Psalm 91 to entice Jesus into flinging Himself off the pinnacle of the Temple, but do we shy away from taking comfort from that psalm? We do not. Why not? Because we discern between godly and diabolical uses of the psalm.

So why do we refuse to discern between godly and diabolical uses of Genesis 1:28? Because we are afraid. Offering someone the comfort of Psalm 91 is a popular and easy enough thing to do. Standing up and saying “I believe we should go ahead with the copper mine,” on the other hand, is wildly unpopular with the chattering classes (who apparently believe that the wiring in their houses appeared ex nihilo in the local Home Depot stockroom). We are afraid to make ourselves easy targets.

But God has not given us a spirit of fear.

We also shy away from dominion language because we are egalitarians at heart. We want to be buddies with the earth, just another piece of the circle of life. We want to just be part of nature. We are part of nature, but we certainly are not just part of it. God made us kings and queens of the earth, whether we like it or not.

Kings and queens are called to discernment. We are going to have to grow up. In some ways, we’re doing pretty well. You can take a walk by the Thames today without risking black lung. Of course, the Pyrenean ibex and the passenger pigeon might not feel that we’re doing as well as we could be, which raises another point.

Kings and queens don’t get a practice round. It’s not a game, and there are no do-overs. We screw up, whole species die and whole habitats disappear. The stakes are high. As a result, we are afraid to screw up, and in our fear, we are prone to hysteria. In 2007, the BBC reported an authoritative study that predicted the complete disappearance of the arctic ice cap by this year. With this year’s polar ice up 60% over last year, that prediction has joined a host of others on the junk heap of credible scientific studies that cried Tasmanian wolf.

Again: God has not given us a spirit of fear. We have a duty to God to care for the earth, but we do that as ambassadors of The Lord of the Universe. Our best Chicken Little impersonation does not represent Him well.

God loves the creation. He made it, and it speaks of Him. He has committed the creation to our care. We can’t pawn the job off on someone else; we’re stuck with it. God has so made the world that there’s no way to learn but by doing, and He knew, better than anyone, that there would be a learning curve. We cannot fulfill our commission to be His image on the earth without ruling well. We cannot rule well without learning, and we cannot learn without mistakes. In other words, God knew, from eternity past, that we would royally screw it up.

But God has not given us a spirit of fear. There is grace for even this. Faith means being willing to embrace the task God gave us, and trust God with our mistakes. We will grow up. The earth will blossom. In the end, heaven will come to earth, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory and honor into the New Jerusalem, where a river will flow from under the throne of the Lamb. Beside the river, the tree of life will grow, and the leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations. Forever.

***

This post is part of the September Synchroblog. You can read the other contributions at the links below:

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 17th, 2013 at 8:00 am and is filed under Meditations, Speaking as God Speaks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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